I should be better at playing “Trivial Pursuit” than I am. Ever since I was a little boy, I have collected arcane information in my brain. I have kept and, as long as I am not under the pressure to win a game, can generally recall some pretty unimportant trivia. Not that this storing of facts is unimportant, when I was getting my degree in history I found the ability helpful.
But I was often warned if I did not find a way to get rid of some of this useless information I would not have the room for more important things. I tell myself the reason I have trouble with simple multiplication is because I remember the definition (and spelling) of the word antidisestablishmentarianism, or that the light a firefly makes is called bioluminescence.
Since I have a calculator, it seems to me like a pretty good trade.
I delight in my friend who likes to call me a “free flowing fountain of useless information,” and not just because it is a nice alliteration.
Occasionally something will come to me from grade school, some little bit of knowledge was passed on and it is just tucked away in one of my brain’s lobes. Then, all of a sudden, it comes roaring out, and usually with the story behind it.
Like the day a few weeks ago when I was having a conversation with someone about the speed of light and I mentioned that the light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach the earth. First of all, I was surprised that I remembered that, but secondly, I was happy to remember sitting in my fifth grade classroom as the teacher told us, “eight full minutes.”
What struck me was when she said, “When the sun goes out, we won’t know about it for eight full minutes.”
I had never thought about the sun going out before, so I raised my hand and asked if the sun was going to go out. She had said, “when” after all.
“Oh yes,” she said, “but that won’t happen for billions of years.”
That relieved me somewhat, but I thought by then people might have satellites or something close to the sun to tell them it went out. I spent many hours wondering what I would do if I knew everything was going to go dark in eight full minutes. I wondered what a person would do to make those eight minutes “full.”
Now I simply ponder the grandeur of it all. Light moves so fast that our eye cannot even begin to follow it, which now teaches me of great distance, and of great waiting.
The sun, whose light brings forth the beauty and wonder of the earth, whose distance from us by only a few degrees tilt of the earth brings forth the seasons, whose warmth cheers the heart, touched us from a distance so great it takes eight full minutes for the light to reach us.
The stars that I admire, many of them so ancient they have long ago burned out, still make the night sky a thing of breathtaking beauty. How long has that little pinpoint of light traveled to reach my wondering eye? How old is that light that makes us look up and sigh?
We have waited billions of years for the light that dances over us in the night to reach us.
The stars of nights and the full eight minutes of sunlight can lead us wonderfully into a new Advent understanding of waiting and expectation. Although we rarely wait well, sometimes we have no choice. Yet, we can always allow ourselves to be renewed and to prepare well for the coming that is promised. Each fleeting moment that passes brings us closer to a promise fulfilled in wonder and justice and peace.
We do not, of course, confuse this waiting with passivity, or even of fear. We wait joyfully, and we labor and grow. We see how far the presence of God has brought us as a human family, and we work and wait for the day when he brings us to fulfillment. In the meantime, we continue to struggle to grow, to let go of pettiness, of bitterness, of gossip, of anger and hatred. We grow in the sweet and painful art of loving one another.
And we remember the waiting of God, for God continues to lead us to that moment and knows the joy it will bring. Each time he hears his people cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” God is renewed in longing and perhaps grows in excitement as it nears.
Ponder this thought during this holy season. Was the earth even cool, was there even one celled life upon this globe when the light was born that would spend eons streaking through the darkness before it would lead gentle magi to a home in Bethlehem where a promise would be made and its completion assured? How long had God waited and prepared for this birth?
Sometimes it is really worth the wait.